


The Culmination Of Our Errors

by EtincelleDOR



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 08:28:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17301266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtincelleDOR/pseuds/EtincelleDOR
Summary: Alone and dying in the Rift, Lotor sends his final confession to Allura, in the form of an S.O.S. that he knows she will never hear.Until it's far too late.





	The Culmination Of Our Errors

**Author's Note:**

> I really think Allura lost herself to the fight in S8. If they had both survived, I think she might have understood Lotor's motivations a little better. 
> 
> That's kinda where this story comes from. 
> 
> Apologies for pointless fluff. :)

 Gone.

She is gone.

Every alarm in the Sincline cockpit is blaring, screaming at him to do something, but there is nothing left to be done. Virulent Quintessence seizes inside him, lighting up every nociceptor with blinding pain.

This is it. He thinks. He is going to die here.

He feels the blood drain from his face and pool in his abdomen and he fights the prickling urge to be sick, a single tear oddly hot and tingling against his cold skin.  

Lotor has never been afraid of death. He had lived alongside it for so long that it had lost its ability to intimidate him. When he was younger, fighting in the pits for his father’s amusement, his bones and his soul breaking beneath the fists of his full-blooded opponents, he remembered wishing one of them would take it too far, hit him one more time and end it all.

As it would happen, death wasn’t the welcome friend he thought it would be.

He wanted to tell her. Truly. He wanted to try to make her understand, he thought she would…

More tears spill down his cheeks.  

Everyone believed he was a monster.

So there was nothing left to do except become one.

A silent roar escapes him, breaking through his set jaw – everything hurts, a never-ending torrent of agony the whispers in his head told him he deserved. _Make it stop, please… Please…_

It took him a few ticks to release he was muttering out loud, barely able to hear the sound of his own voice over the creaking of strained metal, the stutter of failing engines and overloaded pressure gauges. His fist curls around the controls limply. He is done fighting.

It takes all the concentration he has to raise his hand to the dashboard, pressing his fingers gently to the ‘silence alarms’ option. The cockpit falls silent, and Lotor can hear the rasping of his own breath in and out of his lungs. The screens continue to flash red warning lights, most of the text too small through his blurred vision to comprehend, but he can just make out the largest letters. S.O.S.

How ironically pointless. The S.O.S function, the one failsafe he was so sure he would never have to use, was set to alert one person. And she had left him here. He grits his teeth.

He jabs at the S.O.S. beacon.

It wouldn’t transmit, he knew that much. And he didn’t care.

“ _Allura_ …”     

It’s like someone had a fist around his heart and was choking the emotion out of it. _I hate you. I hate you, I hate you…_

Hate had been a pretty consistent feature in his long life, but he never knew he could hate like this, in a fiery all-consuming rage of misery and vengeance. At least his father had never pretended to love him. And how he had loved her. Another racking sob gripped his body and wouldn’t let go. He wanted so badly to be loved, and to give it in return, that it was a foreign concept to him, a terrible secret to be hidden from his father at all costs. But time after time he proved so wholly incapable of earning it, of being worthy, and that the disastrous consequences for others simply could never be worth it. Allura was different, he thought. He had allowed himself to dare to dream of a beautiful future with her, she had shattered that dream into smithereens. Over misinterpretations. He inhales through bloody nostrils. They all knew what they wanted to think.

_I thought you trusted me… You left me here to die._

He bites his lip.

“I know you can’t hear me…” he blinks more tears, “But…” he swallows them back with a bitter lump, “I don’t want to be alone.”

 

* * *

 

 

“We’ve found a moon with a suitable atmosphere, Sir.”

Finally. Lotor uncrossed his legs and lifted his fist from his unentertained face. He had initially been reluctant to let his generals anywhere near the task, but Zethrid was becoming almost impossible to live with on a mid-movement afternoon with nothing else to do. This is the forty-second moon he has had them analyse.

“Report.”

Acxa enlarges her station screen to be visible to the entire bridge. “It has a fifteen percent oxygen composure, higher altitudes wouldn’t be habitable. Water is plentiful, but a considerable amount is atmospheric…”

He raises an eyebrow. “Atmospheric?”

Acxa immediately catches his meaning. “Precipitation is heavy. But it has a small population of indigenous animal and plant species. We will need fresh soil samples to confirm, but we have every reason to expect life there is possible.

A small smile flickers onto his face. Yes, he thinks. This will do quite nicely.

“Thank you Acxa.” He rises from his seat and heads for the door. “Set course for base.” He commands, “That is enough for one day.”

“Um… Lotor?” Ezor says quietly, “What’s your plan for this place?”

That is a question Ezor knows better than to ask by now.

He pauses, his eyes peering coldly over his shoulder. “That’s classified, Ezor.” He says, “But you shall all know in good time.”

 

* * *

 

 

_“You are no better than your father…”_

 

“The Altean Colony thrived…” he says, forcing himself to concentrate through the hissings of Allura’s voice, as real as if she were standing right behind him, “Your people were happy and prospering. So much so that overpopulation issues began to arise. We tried to ration what produce we could grow but it was no use. Nngh…”

Soon, it would end, soon…

“It would be mere deca-phoebs before people were starving...”

 

* * *

 

 

The crowd was large, as it always was. The starlight was bright, the breeze fresh as it playfully whips up strands of his hair behind him on the stage. They are all here to see him. Their trust thrummed through his heart, despite his Galra blood. Alteans were a wonderful race, their happiness infectious and so beautiful to see after years of persecution. Another smile breaks onto his face. It was the highest honour and privilege to serve his mother’s people.

“Good citizens of the Altean Colony!” He roars, “It is with great pleasure that I announce, that a solution to the overpopulation issues of this planet has been found.” Excited gasps echo throughout, sending a shiver up his spine, “A second site has been identified, to become a home to the flourishing Altean population for millennia to come!”

The crowd erupts in a deafening cheer, and he is sure that the feeling brimming over inside him, is elation.

 

* * *

 

 

_“Monster… Abomination… Murderer… MURDERER!”_

 

He doesn’t deny it.

“Another host planet was found, that seemed habitable.” He gasps, “Only the strongest were selected to be the first settlers there, the first deca-phoebs were going to be hard.”

“If only we knew how hard…”

 

* * *

 

 

The superstorms came infrequently, with no pattern to their occurrence, but when they did, it was like watching the devastated colony rise from the ashes, each time.

Lotor’s exhausted eyes drift over the screens of his fighter, desperate for sleep. His heavy chest armour lay discarded on the floor, along with his boots and vambraces. Thoroughly against protocol, he knew, in case of emergencies, but he simply didn’t care. His concentration is fixed on that screen.

He could trust no one else with this place, not anybody. Acxa, Ezor and Zethrid were suspicious enough already, and too intelligent to fool for long. His ship had limited stealth capabilities left, but the surveillance was important. He had powered down all other non-essential systems to preserve power, the only light to work in was from the interface itself. It had taken multiple attempts, and days and nights without rest, but finally, it was showing him what he so desperately needed.

Meteorological scanners weren’t usually found aboard Galra cruisers, it was usually easier to perform studies from ground units and send data, rather than equipment. His fighter’s atmospheric scanners were typical for its make and model, mostly for detecting temperature and ambient air constituents, but he had never been shy of making a few moderations here and there.

The monitors bleeped gently, as a generated image of the planet loaded, with detailed imaging of its atmosphere. Areas of low pressure and dense, humid cloud rumble as the next supercell thunderstorm descends over the day region, intense microbursts of downwards pressure kick up sand in their wake.

He grins as if he cannot believe his eyes. He finally has the technology to predict the superstorms.

 

* * *

 

 

_"It’s nothing more than you deserve…”_

“Harsh superstorms rained down upon the new Colony, making life on the surface impossible. They would last for phoebs, destroying everything in their wake. I realised I was somewhat, hasty, in choosing a new host planet.

 

* * *

 

 

A thud coming from behind him makes him jump from his seat with a jolt, his hand darting to the weapon at his hip. The doors to the meeting room slide open, revealing, to Lotor’s dismay, a grey-haired, middle-aged Altean, drips of perspiration pooling on the floor below him.

Lotor lets out an entertained chuckle as he settles back down into his seat and raises a glass of wine to his lips. “Really Phineor? The Slipperies?”

Phineor, the slightly brazen ambassador the Alteans had chosen to liase with him on their behalf, grimaces and rolls his eyes as his precious purchase against the edge of the door fails yet again. “With all due respect, your Imperial Highness,” he says, “Don’t be a cocky sod.”

A smirks tilts Lotor’s mouth as he pours a glass of wine for his guest. “I trust you are otherwise well?”

“As well as can be expected thank you.” His sarcasm doesn’t go unnoticed. “Whatever you’re doing that keeps you looking so young you should bottle it and sell it.” He grumbles, lowering himself gently into the chair opposite Lotor. “Well then, I hear you have news?”  

“It’s not good.” He says, “My sensors detect a superstorm on the horizon, a bad one.”

“I suppose three deca-phoebs was a longer interval than expected.” Phineor’s hand grips at his wine glass nervously. “How long until it hits us?”

“Quintants.” Says Lotor, “I have made preparations to start evacuations tomorrow.”

“To the first Colony?” Phineor asks. Lotor nods, “Where they cannot feed us?”

Lotor squirms inwardly. As small as the distance is, the food shortage will be problematic.

“Our engineers believe cryostasis is an option.” Phineor says, “We’ve built enough pods to supply the demand.”

The irony is plain to Lotor’s ears. Alteans could address the lack of technology on a barren moon within deca-phoebs by refining raw metal ores, but applying the basic sciences of soil biochemistry, plant physiology and proper agriculture to grow food for themselves was proving to be a massive shortcoming in their educations.     

“It’s not one I’m keen to exploit just yet.”

Phineor is stern in his manner, but not unreasonable. “They say King Alfor’s daughter went into cryostasis.” He says, raising his wine glass, “Just before Altea was destroyed. Legend has it that she may still be alive today.”

“Alfor’s daughter is almost certainly dead.” Lotor retorts, “And I’d like to reassure my people with promises of more than just ‘may’.”

Phineor smiles. Whilst hundreds of years younger than Lotor himself, Phineor has aged where Lotor hasn’t, and likes to carry himself with the scepticism and wisdom of an older man. “That as _may_ be, your Highness, Old Altea was built upon a near uninhabitable landscape. Meteorites would fall from the heavens not infrequently and the liveable plains, very prone to torrential flooding.” He says, “My point is, that Alteans are survivors, Prince Lotor. It was our mastery of technology that allowed us to survive before, we can survive here and we will.”

“No one will be able to monitor your cryosleep.”

“That is not unusual in transit. We are confident the pods are safe. Your Highness, we cannot keep waiting out these superstorms.” He says, “We can predict them now, we have you to thank for that… But we can’t produce the food to sustain ourselves for the duration and the landscape recovery.”

“In a few more deca-phoebs, maybe.” He mutters, “Is this what the Council have decided?”

Phineor nods. “Your consent pending, yes.” Phineor presses his lips together in a firm line, “I cannot explain to these people why they have to starve when a suitable alternative is available.”

Lotor frowns. No, he thinks. They were only here because of him. It’s not ideal. But it might be an acceptable compromise.

 

* * *

 

 

_“Liar.”_

It was helping to talk.

“I placed, one hundred, into cryopods. I thought they would be safe from the storm…”

 

* * *

 

 

The sentries he took with him to the colonies were the most precious commodities he possessed currently, aside from his ship. He could wipe their memories, and replace them with something suitable to give the Galra surveillance systems that he knew his father had trained on him. False locations, updates, cleverly failed anti-hacking protocols.

When one of them informed him of a security breach on a far-out watchpoint, he orders his generals to prepare his fighter immediately.

Phineor and the Council had chosen a mountainous area for the pod bunker. The altitude kept wildlife away, and put them well above the flood level, but came with its own disadvantages in the storm. What would normally have been a brisk pleasant fifteen-dobosh walk was a three-varga trudge involving grappling hooks and safety lines. Water gushed from the dark sky and fell three hundred feet past him to the ground below, rendering him soaked to the skin through his suit’s waterproofing, and almost entirely unable to see past his visor.

Placing his feet carefully one by one to avoid slipping and plummeting three hundred feet to his death, Lotor clings to his hook for dear life. He knows from previous experience that landing any form of craft at sea level was downright impossible in these conditions. The microbursts of downstreaming wind force hit the ground at force and spread outwards. A certain deathwish for any pilot. But landing halfway up a mountain, had seemed more plausible at the time, but now seemed more like certifiable madness. He began to wish he had proceeded with the evacuations as planned.

By the time he keys in the passcode to the bunker door, Lotor is almost ready to collapse, his lungs fighting for oxygen in the high altitude. He feels some cool relief as his suit registers his low blood oxygen saturation and activates its endogenous supply, blowing cool, clinical-smelling air into his helmet.

Inhaling deeply, Lotor pulls himself to his feet, water dripping from his body and pattering onto the rocky floor.   

Everything seems completely normal at first. The pods glow faintly, their sleeping inhabitants peaceful in their faces. Logging in to the pod’s control systems, Lotor’s pupils narrow as they are met with red.

‘MALFUNCTION: ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH FLATLINE’

Lotor’s whole body filled with bloodcurdling horror, as he ran from pod to pod, every single one reading the same thing. ‘MALFUNCTION: ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH FLATLINE’

Every, single one.  

“ _No. No no no_ …” These pods’ higher functions had been offline for phoebs. Lotor boots the maintenance portal in a blind panic. He isn’t even sure which buttons he is pressing.

“ _Please…”_

It was seventeen full system reboots, reconfigurations the EEG and back-up manual EEG applications for each pod before Lotor slams his fist into the control panel.  

Baseline vitals were low, but present in all pods. But their brains were dead. Alive as they were, they would never wake up again.

Screams of Galra curses echo through the walls of the bunker, numbness washes over him, his vision blurs and he is vaguely aware of his knees hitting cold stone, before his palms and his forehead collided with it also.

This was all his fault.

He is responsible for the deaths of one-hundred innocent people.

 

* * *

 

 

_“I’m not wrong, am I?”_

“I didn’t account for the flares of electrical charge from the storm.” His breaths come in dry rasps, “I… It was my fault…”

 

* * *

 

 

A thought seizes Lotor.

The moment he has thought it, he knows it is wrong. Immoral. Despicable.

Not unlike himself.

His shoulders dropped a little. These Alteans harboured huge amounts Quintessence inside them, more each than the Galra could mine in deca-phoebs. Quintessence that they would never use. Technically they weren’t dead yet, but they might as well have been. His own stupidity had seen to that. If he could harvest it, he could supply it to the first colony. He could stabilise the first colony for centa-phoebs, make the need for a second colony non-existent.

The Alteans would die, of course.

Lotor had killed before. Intentionally, and never allowed himself to feel a thing. Kill, or be killed. That was how it was. But this wasn’t the same. This was no more or less than mass murder.

Numbness spread through him like a disease, running under his skin to deeper parts of him far beneath his hard armour, to places he doesn’t even want it. The resealing and rewiring of faulty electronics was straightforward, the pressing of buttons to divert the energy fluctuations, so easy. The weight on his heart was considerable, calculated, but so bearable, he finds. How could something so abominable be so easy?

Lotor closes his eyes, lowers his head and raises his hand to his chest in a salute as the pods ignite one by one, millions of fragile sparks of released Quintessence, so bright and beautiful alone, their life almost tangible in the air, floating upwards in one, single breath-taking multifaceted helix of aurora, towards the ceiling and casting him into shadow.  

The words are on the tip of his tongue.

But asking for forgiveness was surely a joke.

 

* * *

 

 

“ _I thought I could use that Quintessence to... I… Argh_ …”

Lotor couldn’t feel his extremities anymore. The pain concentrated around his chest and abdomen, indicating to him that his organs were failing. Her voice has fallen silent, she doesn’t taunt him anymore. He saw nothing. He heard nothing, not even the ribbons of his own voice.

_“I… I… Just…”_

_“I tried.”_   

His vision fades to warm, white light, and he is sure he can see Altea in the distance.

_“I love you…”_

 

* * *

 

 

Allura feels the roar of the Blue Lion from beyond her plane of existence.

Time passed in an odd way, wherever she was. Sometimes, she wonders if she even really exists at all. At times, Allura can feel her heartbeat and her breath, as real as if she were alive again. At others, she could be a sliver of gust of wind, or a single ray of sunlight. She can go to places or to people if she wants to, in life or death, and this pleases her from time to time. But most often it saddens her.  

She had watched over Lance, and all the others, like she promised she would. Sadness envelopes her when she realised they would never know she stood there with them, as they raised a glass to her each deca-phoeb.

To be able to walk on her beloved Altea, but not to feel the grass beneath her feet, or inhale the sweet juniberry scent in the air, felt cruel, in so many ways. To be home in so many respects, and never further from it in others. Her father had advised her it was in bad taste to haunt your own life. But to Allura, it was just one unfulfilling adventure after another. This is where she belongs now. In Death.

Not that she belonged anywhere else. The fear of losing her very purpose after the war ended, was greater than she ever felt in battle. No family, no planet, no place. Lance’s family were more than kind to her, welcomed her as if she could be a part of their world, and that had made her want the ground to swallow her up.

She feels the fierce purring of the Blue Lion, deep inside her soul. As if it is calling her. Closing her eyes, Allura lets herself be drawn towards it. How could Blue possibly be calling her now? And why?

No, she thinks, don’t get too excited. ‘ _You couldn’t pilot the damned thing if you tried’_ , her rational mind kicked in, ‘ _You can’t move a coin across a countertop_.’  

Her hand twitches around something cool and metallic beneath her grip, and she gasps as the cockpit of the Blue Lion fires into life around her. She peers out of Blue’s front windows into murky blackness - they were somewhere underwater, that much was clear, and so deep that Blue’s pressure sensors were indicating amber warnings. Not that she supposed it mattered when she was no more than a ghost.  

Allura’s face lights up in a nostalgic grin. “It’s been too long old friend!” she says, lovingly stroking the dashboard, “But I think it’s time to find yourself a paladin with a little more substance.”

Blue purrs lightly in response.

“What is it Blue?”  

Blue’s communications dash bleeps at her, listing all of the last interactions she had received as its paladin. Most are recordings of their final battle, and she isn’t keen to replay any of them. But there is one at the top of the list, marked as received only in the last few doboshes. An S.O.S. message from Lotor’s Sincline mech.

Allura recoils as if something she has been bitten by something – how can that be possible? Lotor had said all he could possibly have had to say to her, right before he opened fire upon them. And still, somehow, the decision to leave him there, despite its rationality, had left her reeling with a guilt that she had never managed to shake.

Why would Blue want her to hear his crazed, maniacal voice after so long? Her simultaneous love and hate for him had torn her limb from limb, the cool realisation of what he was so easily capable of, ripping away her humanity and leaving her empty. It was what had made her what she was for the rest of her living existence.  

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Blue growls in protest.

“I won’t let him destroy me any more than he already has!” she says firmly, “What good can it possibly do now?”

The dash keeps bleeping, and she sighs. Hearing Lotor’s voice again could only bring her pain, whether he raved about killing her or begged her for forgiveness. She interlaces her fingers and leans her chin over them with a frown. A part of her, she supposed, had always wanted to pry him out of that mech, throw a glass of water over his face and ask him why.

“Alright, alright.” She says, resting her palms lightly over the controls as if to quell an argument between lion and paladin, “I trust you.”

Time passed differently in the Rift as she well knew, but there could be no doubt that whatever Lotor had to say, it had come deca-phoebs too late.

 

* * *

 

 

Allura sniffs, and wipes involuntary tears from her eyes with her sleeves, unable to prevent her arms from shaking with the sheer volume of shock as the end of the message plays out. She swallows the lump in her throat – he had clearly succumbed before he could switch it off, leaving a sinister recording of static interference. His words rang in her ears again and again and again until she could no longer hear herself think.

Silence fills the Blue Lion as she fiercely fights back sobs of grief, and fails.

“You, stupid, _stupid_ man!!!” she can’t stop herself from screaming into the cockpit, “Is _this_ , what we all died for???”

Allura spots a glimmer of a reflection in the window glass and draws in a shivering gasp into her lungs. Her numb hands paddle uselessly at the controls to turn her seat, forgetting of course that she couldn’t move it. He is standing in the shadows at the back of the cockpit, his face turned away from her. He can’t look at her. He has no idea how he can possibly be here. How she can have heard the final words he wanted no one to hear. Part of him wants to throw his arms around her, part of him wants to shoot her, and he cannot decide which. He was never ready for this.

“It’s…” she shakes her head in disbelief, holding her palm over her mouth briefly for fear she may vomit, “It’s, deca-phoebs too late, Lotor!”

She hadn’t wanted to see him since her death, it was far easier in the afterlife to run away from your life than it was to face it. He had hurt her so badly, betrayed her, used her, her people; she could never have forgiven him.

It hurt too much, somehow in the knowledge that if she hadn’t been so cruel in retaliation, if she had simply been able to talk him down, they might both still be alive.

“You were never meant to hear it.” He says quietly.

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you talk to me?” she asks, her voice unemotional, “We could have made this right.”

“You decided in a torn-tick that I was a monster.” He replies coolly, unable to process the rage bubbling below the surface, “Would you have believed me? If I had?”

“I would have listened. I could have helped you.”

“Really?” Lotor takes slow steps out of the shadows, his sarcasm tangible, “You made it very clear at the time, Princess, that we are _not_ on the same side!!!”  

Allura blinks hard, bidding the tears not to come but they come all the same, falling away from her face and dissolving into nothingness before they hit the dashboard, her knuckles blanched white from her clenched fists while her own callous words echoed in her brain. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you Lotor…” she says, “I wanted to come and get you but it wasn’t possible.”

“And so am I! But as you said yourself.” He says, “It’s deca-phoebs too late now.”

 

* * *

 

 

She has no more tears left, her face reddened and sore from the thousands she has cried for him. _‘Why?_ ’ She thinks, why is she sorry? His actions were not her responsibility, nor was his death. So why does this hurt so much?

So much time passes in silence that Allura isn’t even sure if he is still there.

She wouldn’t blame him if he wasn’t.

She had wanted, for so long, to ask him about all of this, and now that she can she has no idea what to say.  

“Do you ever find yourself wondering if this is it?” she asked the silence of the cockpit, “This is all you will ever be? The culmination of your errors?”

Lotor feels himself breaking inside, the love for her that he had buried pushing up through the cracks. He knew he never wanted to watch her cry again. 

“I think this is as ‘it’ as it gets.” He says, watching her eyes narrow in the reflection of Blue’s windows. “We can’t go back and change things.”

She meets his eye contact in the reflection. “Would you?” she asks, “Go back and change things?”

There was nothing he wouldn’t do to go back and change what he did. Nothing.

“Yes.” He swallows, “Would you?”

“I don’t know…” she says, pressing her hand to her forehead, eyes closed in indecision. “I lost myself in the fight. I didn’t really see it at the time. I couldn’t feel anything other than my own need for power, to win at any cost.” She says, her voice cool and calm, “And I hated myself, because I realised I had become like you.”

“You are nothing like me.”

“I was willing to do anything, _anything,_ to defeat Honerva.” she argues, “I would done terrible things. And that scared me because even though you weren’t really there I had never felt closer to you.”

Although he knows he no longer has a physical body, Lotor is sure he can feel his heart beating.

Allura continues as if she can’t hear him. “I felt cold, to everything else except our mission. And Lance… Lance loved me, so much and I just thought if I put in a little effort I could return it like he deserved…”

Lotor rolled his eyes inwardly. The princess wasn’t a commodity to be deserved. And it saddened him that she thought she was. 

Allura jumps as she feels a large, warm gentle hand on her shoulder, as real as if they were both alive. Peering over it with bleary eyes, she finds his face, not angry, not sad, just wracked with an uncomfortable sort of peace.

“There isn’t a man alive or dead that deserves you, Allura.” He says softly, “And you are the culmination of your successes, not your errors.”

He moves silently from behind her to beside her, and wordlessly drops to his knees, his hand moving from her shoulder to her hand as he peers up into her angry blue eyes. Self-hatred burns at his soul - he had succeeded in killing the only person he had ever loved. “I won’t insult you by asking for forgiveness.”

Suddenly Allura is aware of how cold her hand is without his, as he rises, constantly moving out of her reach. “I won’t interrupt your paradise any further, Princess.”

“Wait.”

He pauses, and turns to see the princess fly up from her seat, and then hesitate. “What is it?” he asks.

Lotor feels the wind knocked out of him as her body as collides with his. Grabbing her arms to steady her, he gasps as her palms smooth up his back, her head tucks under his chin and she holds him against her tightly, the wetness of her cheek pressing against his neck.

“Please don’t go!” she blurts, burying her face into his shoulder, “I can’t lose you again…”

He doesn’t move a muscle beneath her, and Allura begins to feel she has made a terrible mistake. She shoots back from his embrace and composes herself. “Ancients, I’m sorry Lotor, that was inappropriate…”

Lotor stares wide-eyed at her in a somewhat uncomfortable expression, his mind racing so fast he can’t keep up with it. Maybe this is just another one of his delusions, or dreams, tormenting him like the Hell he deserved. If it is, he would happily be mad for all eternity. His hand rises to her cheek, stroking it gently with the back of his curled fingers, his thumb tenderly brushing over her marking.

"I'm not going anywhere."

He feels himself freeze again as her hand covers his own, holding it gently in her grasp. He leans in, stopping just before their lips touch. Move if you’re going to, he wills her, move away and this will all be over forever.

He trembles ever so slightly as he sees her breathing deepens and her eyes close, and she closes the final gap. The kiss is chaste, innocent, powerful. 

Allura sighs into him as she lets all of her guilt, and all of her pain slip away. No more hate, no more lies.

It’s him. It was always him.


End file.
